


Morphing Can Be Cutthroat

by mademoisellePlume



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 17:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6816487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mademoisellePlume/pseuds/mademoisellePlume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, sometimes you do some silly things, especially if your kids are fans of a certain television show...</p>
<p>(In the Interdimensional Home universe)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morphing Can Be Cutthroat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [albaoaurora (myrtu)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=albaoaurora+%28myrtu%29).



“Tonight on Cutthroat Kitchen, we have a strangely sweet episode for you! I have 100,000 dollars of cold hard cash. Four chefs get 25,000 dollars each. If they want to leave this kitchen with any of the cash, they’ll have to survive three culinary challenges. And each other. It’s a game we like to call Cutthroat Kitchen.”

It was a special episode - instead of chefs, the four people the camera cut to after Alton Brown’s speech were very well known to the American and international public. There were celebrity episodes, and then there was something like this.

“I remember the last time Jake tried to cook an anniversary dinner, the first round is going to be a breeze.” Marco snorted, making sure his long hair was tied securely in a ponytail. 

“Hey, I practiced for this.” Jake protested. “You’re the one who’s going to go down as soon as we branch out from something Eva taught you how to cook after she was rescued. You’ll fall back on your Chef Boyardee roots soon enough!”

“Boys, stop thinking either of you have a chance, you both have as much chance of winning this as Jake does winning a basketball game.” Rachel said airily, winking at the camera and tossing a long blonde braid over her shoulder.

“It’s just a silly game, guys! But you’re all going down.” Cassie beamed.

“Hello chefs - well, not chefs.” Alton greeted as he came down the staircase. “Saviors of the world? It’s a bit of a mouthful. Before I go over the rules, thanks for saving us all, Pruan 342 was a pain in the ass that never appreciated my hilarious prawn-based puns, yadda yadda. Thanks also go out to our audience - specifically little Prince, Aliss, Lupe and James who made their birthday requests this year for their collective parents to go on our show! Wouldn’t have these incredible ratings without you kiddos, thanks a lot.

“Anyways! Rules! I have hear in my case 100,000 in cold hard cash. You will each get a quarter of it, $25,000. You can use it how you see fit throughout the competition - but remember that the winner will only walk out of here with the money they have remaining. Understand?”

“Yes,” was chorused, and the money was parceled out as each of them introduced themselves.

“My name is Jake, I was the leader of the Animorphs, and now I’m a military advisor and consultant for the government on various alien issues. I led our team to victory in the Yeerk War, and I’ll beat each of them into the ground in this competition.”

“My name is Marco, I was the tactician of the team, I’m the cute one of our little polygamous family. I might have grown up with defrosting a pizza being the highlight of my culinary skills, but my mom’s taught me a lot, and finding ways to feed the pickier kids we have has helped me learn how to get creative. I’m going to brag so much when I win.”  
“My name is Rachel, and I’m going to sabotage the heck out of everyone else. I don’t care about cooking and grew up on take out, but I do care about winning. What was I in the war? The terrifying one.”

“My name is Cassie, I was the morals of our little team, and I’m the only one that has consistently known how to cook since we were young. I love these idiots dearly and they are going to lose. Has someone told Rachel she can’t order from Pizza Hut for this competition yet?”

Money parcelled out and introductions done, Alton closed the case and turned, folding his arms as he looked at the team of young adults who had once saved the world. Rachel was in a half lunge, ready to start running for the pantry. Marco had his foot ready to trip Jake, and Cassie just looked at him attentively, hand on her basket.

“Since none of you are chefs, I think we’ll start off with something nice and simple. Give me a salad. Any kind of salad, just make sure there’s lettuce, maybe some croutons, a dressing, and is generally healthy and works well together. You have sixty seconds to do all your shopping and that time starts - now!” He jerked the pantry door open.

Jake stumbled on Marcos leg and managed to elbow Marco back before Marco could get too far ahead of him. Rachel dashed and got in first, with Cassie right behind her. Food was getting grabbed off the shelves and shoved into baskets, and Rachel had somehow developed a lot more bulk and muscle to help with pushing people out of the way.

“Rachel, no morphing!” Jake scolded. 

“I didn’t! It’s just water retention!” She lied, letting the bulk of the elephant disappear before her skin went any more gray. 

A voiceover of Jake just sighed and pointed out that her nose had definitely literally gotten longer before she started to reverse the morph. 

Marco was out first, and reached his workstation before looking at his basket and yelping. “Lettuce! Shit!” The others were leaving and Alton was counting down from 5 - he managed to get in and to grab the lettuce, but the pantry closed before he could escape. He sulked as Alton confiscated the head of lettuce and he had to return to his workstation.

“You’ll figure out another way, Marco, don’t worry.” Rachel reassured him with a smirk, clearly not believing he would. His eyes narrowed dangerously.

Alton clapped his hands. “Some of you did well, some of you… did not. But, let’s see how some sabotages change the game!” He opened the dumbwaiter panel and took out a tiny pet tank with a few leaves and a cricket inside of it.

“You’re not going to make us morph, right? I am not going bug on camera.” Rachel said hastily, drawing a line in the sand right away.

“No, no, no morphing! If this auction is purchased, you can take away the bread products, from croutons to anything that could make croutons, and replace it with nothing but these freeze-dried crickets! Your salad can still have a crunch, and maybe even a chirp.” 

“$500.” Marco said immediately. 

“A thousand!” Rachel countered.

“Twelve.” Cassie said quietly. Marco and Rachel shouted ‘fourteen’ at the same time, and when Alton judged Marco as having bid first, Rachel followed it up with two thousand.

It cut to a one on one with Jake who just shrugged and smiled. “They can fight it out, but I don’t think the judge is going to be one of the usual ones, and if it’s who I think it is, bugs won’t matter.”

Rachel ended up winning it for three thousand and gave it to Cassie, kissing her on the cheek as she took all of her premade croutons away and put the box of dead bugs on her workstation.

Alton knocked on the dumbwaiter panel and opened the door. He held up a large shirt and before he could say anything, Jake shouted “TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!”

There was a moment of silence and then Alton asked for another bid - no one did, and he awarded the get along shirt to Jake. “Two chefs have to put that on and work together to cook their dishes, as I guess you surmised from the sight of it.”

“I’ve wanted to do this for years. C’mere Marco and Rachel, you know this is for you.” Jake’s grin was almost peaceful, especially as they complained. 

“This does not go with my cute chef outfit.” “She’s going to maul me without turning into a bear!”

“Look at the camera guys, I wanna take a screenshot later and print this out.” They glared at him flatly and he grinned back. “Can we keep this after? I think some of our kids could use the ‘our get-along shirt- method of learning to cooperate.”

“We’ll work it out after the show.” Alton promised. “Okay everyone, your time of fifteen minutes starts… now!”

Marco and Rachel started playing rock-paper-scissors for who went to start putting things together first. Jake pulled out a bowl and started taking a head of lettuce apart into it.

Cassie opened her box of bugs and wrinkled her nose. It cut to another version of herself, one on one with the camera. “I haven’t eaten bugs in human form, but I definitely remember how they taste as a bat. Deep frying these should make them crunchy at least, and I’ll cover it in dressing.” She dumped them in the deep fryer and got that cooking as she took a small saucepan out and spooned in a bit of olive oil, followed by some mayonnaise, dijon mustard, a bit of salt and pepper, and then grated a garlic clove over it. Scallions were quickly chopped up and then she started to whisk in a cup of buttermilk. 

Rachel had won the rock-paper scissors game and was whisking buttermilk and sour cream in a medium sized bowl. Marco had to be bullied into holding the bowl steady, and she had to take breaks to chop parsley with one hand and drop it in. Then she shook in a bit of salt, pepper, and onion and garlic powder, not bothering the measure any of it.

Once that was done, Marco poked her in the ribs with his free hand until she consented to go to his station, where he dug through his basket, fished out a can of black beans and got them rinsed, starting to rip apart vegetables like celery, green onions, red peppers, and some cilantro. Rachel did not help as he pried the skin off of an avocado, and managed to pull out the bit, before he pulled it apart into big chunks.

Jake poured olive oil into a bowl, squeezed out some honey into it, and squeezed a lemon over it, not noticing little lemon seeds and bits of pulp fall into the in-progress vinaigrette. He added in some salt and pepper and then chopped up an onion roughly and added that in. Then he took his lettuce, poured the vinaigrette over it and put it to the side. 

There was five minutes left - Cassie chopped up her vegetables - lettuce, kale and cucumbers, before chilling her dressing quickly and pouring it over. Then the deep fried bugs, now drained, were dropped on top. Rachel’s salad was romaine lettuce with chopped up baby carrots and her homemade ranch sauce drizzled overtop. Marco mixed up the components of his bean salad just in the nick of time. And Jake mixed together sugar and cinnamon and carefully sifted it overtop of the salad with a small smile to himself.

“Time is up! Hands off!” Alton announced, prompting Rachel and Marco to wrestle to be the first one out of the shirt. 

“Jake, what the fu….dge is that?” Rachel asked, peering over at his bowl. 

“The winning dish.” He said smugly.

“That’s disgusting.” Cassie disagreed, wrinkling her nose. 

“Chefs, I think you might be familiar with our judge and his companion!”

Jake pumped his fist. “Hah! I knew it!” Ax, in his beautiful human morph, grinned at him. Tobias was next to him, and rolled his eyes a little. 

“Your boyfriends Tobias and Ax are tonights judges. They have been told to be impartial and cruel in their judgement. Tobias has assured us that he will be the jerk for the both of them.”

“Ax is a terrible judge of food, but it would be cruel not to let him taste whatever horrors have been concocted here today.” Tobias said.

“Horrors. Hors.” Ax repeated solemnly. 

Alton clapped a hand onto his shoulder. “Alright buddy, you can’t say that on television. Onto the first dish!”

Rachel’s was first, and Tobias got the first bite to ensure that there would be enough for him to eat. “Okay cutie, mine’s just a simple salad with ranch dressing. Nothing fancy.”

“I love you hon. And it’s ...okay? Doesn’t really taste like ranch but it’s good.” Tobias handed the bowl to Ax, and his whole face lit up as he devoured it all in quick succession. Then he kissed Rachel with a loud smacking noise. 

“It was great. Grrrr. Eight. Lots of textures to chew and a tangy sort of tay-aste on the tongue!”

She was repressing her urge to laugh and gestured for them to move on without commenting.

“Sup Marco?” Tobias asked. 

“Tobias my man, I have made an ancient salad recipe that has been passed down in my family for generations. It is an honour for you to eat it, but I think our friendship and romance has finally gotten to that level where I can share this with you.”

“You threw this together and have no idea what you were doing.” 

“None!”

Tobias took a bite and chewed consideringly. “These are huge chunks of vegetables for a bean salad. But it tastes good!”

Ax pulled the bowl out of Tobias hands and was shoving it into his mouth. Beaming at the camera, then at Marco, he swallowed the last mouthful and kissed Marco as well. “It had avadokabracado! What a beautiful human fruit.” 

“Ax man, you know kissing the chef isn’t required.”  
“But I like kissing you!”

Marco went slightly red and waved him on to Cassie. 

“Salad with buttermilk dressing and cricket croutons.” She told them. At least neither of them would turn their nose up at bugs.

“Cricktons!” 

“Marco, your turn is over, hush.” She told him as Tobias spread a cricket and some veg with a fork. 

“They’re very crispy, but the salad is kind of drenched in dressing, Cass.” Tobias told her with a half shrug.

“I’ve never eaten these in human morph before! Ore!” Ax ate all the crickets first before sucking up the dressing-drenched salad. He tried to give Cassie a kiss, but she blocked him. 

“Not with cricket breath.” Gently, she pushed him over to Jake.

Tobias looked at his very smug looking leader/boyfriend, at the dish, and then at his uncle, who had the biggest grin and wide joyful eyes in the world. “You are pandering to a judge you did not know was coming.”

“Yep.”

“You underhanded jerk.”

“Yep.”

Tobias sighed, took a bite, wished humans had taste buds more like hawks, and let Ax attack what was definitely his favourite salad of them all.

Instead of kissing Jake- who definitely had a similar cricket-related rule - Ax just licked the bowl clean happily.

“Okay kids, let’s go have a little talk and figure out what we’re going to do here.” Alton ushered them off. 

After a short, whispered discussion, they turned around and Alton opened his mouth. 

“Jake wins the game!” Ax said quickly, before Alton could say anything.

“Hah!” 

“What? No, that’s not how it works, Ax, there’s two more rounds.” Alton told him, lowering his brows and shaking his head at the triumphant Jake.

“One person is going home, and I’m sorry to say that person is Cassie. Sorry, it wasn’t the bugs, it was the dressing.”

“And that means I’m going to need that money back in the case.” Alton finishes, opening the case for Cassie to deposit her money into.

“Next time we do this, let’s have a judge that can’t be bribed with cinnamon sugar.” She suggested, rolling her eyes at the camera as she walked off down the hall.

“Now, onto round two…” Alton said as Tobias and Ax retreated back up the stairs.


End file.
